Month: May 2012

Compared to the other major naval powers, France was slow to start building dreadnoughts, instead finishing the planned Danton class of pre-dreadnoughts, laying down five in 1907 and 1908. It was not until September 1910 that the first of the Courbet class was laid down,...

With their victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, the Japanese became concerned about the potential for conflict with the USA. The theorist Satō Tetsutarō developed the doctrine that Japan should have a battlefleet at least 70% the size of that of the U.S. This...

The American South Carolina-class battleships were the first all-big-gun ships completed by one of the United Kingdom’s rivals. The planning for the type had begun before Dreadnought was launched. While there is some speculation the U.S Navy design was influenced by informal contacts with sympathetic...

The building of Dreadnought coincided with increasing tension between the United Kingdom and Germany. Germany had begun to build a large battlefleet in the 1890s, as part of a deliberate policy to challenge British naval supremacy. With the conclusion of the Entente Cordiale between the...

Dreadnoughts were developed as a move in an international battleship arms-race which had begun in the 1890s. The British Royal Navy had a big lead in the number of pre-dreadnought battleships, but a lead of only one dreadnought.[88] This has led to criticism that the...

The first generation of dreadnoughts used coal to fire the boilers which fed steam to the turbines. Coal had been in use since the very first steam warships, but had many disadvantages. It was labor-intensive to pack coal into the ship’s bunkers and then feed...

Dreadnoughts were propelled by two to four screw propellers.[73] Dreadnought herself, and all British dreadnoughts, had screw shafts driven by steam turbines. However, the first generation of dreadnoughts built in other nations used the slower triple-expansion steam engine which had been standard in pre-dreadnoughts.[74] Turbines...

The final element of the protection scheme of the first dreadnoughts was the subdivision of the ship below the waterline into several watertight compartments. If the hull was holed—by shellfire, mine, torpedo, or collision—then, in theory, only one area would flood and the ship could...

The bulk of a dreadnought’s armor was concentrated around the “armored citadel”. This was a box, with four armored walls and an armored roof, around the most important parts of the ship. The sides of the citadel were the “armored belt” of the ship, which...

Much of the displacement of a dreadnought was taken up by the steel plating of its armor. Designers spent much time and effort to provide the best possible protection for their ships against the various weapons they would be faced with. However, only so much...